The Know-it-all's Tell-all

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

German is remarkably
efficient at capturing complex emotions in a single word.The weight gain associated with a breakup or
other emotional turmoil is called kummerspeck—literally,
grief bacon.Americans have appropriated
the German word schadenfreude –taking
pleasure in the misfortunes of others—I assume because it so perfectly captures
the driving force behind much of our popular culture: reality television,
tabloid journalism, the 24-hour news cycle.

I recently learned
another German word that I feel needs to be embraced, if not by the culture as
a whole then certainly by those of us in education.Schlimmbesserung
is an improvement that makes things worse.I entered the teaching profession in 1995 and, since that time, have
lost count of the number of times I've witnessed or been the victim of schlimmbesserung.

Last month, a participant in one of
my beginning teacher seminars asked my opinion of a new policy in his high
school.The faculty had been tasked with
administering common formative assessments, or CFAs, that would provide
baseline data against which they could measure student progress.Concern arose that the students were simply
marking random answers on their CFAs, which the leadership team interpreted as
a failure to take the process seriously.

(Il)logic Model

Before I reveal how they "solved" the problem, let’s first examine their logic.I present the following syllogism:

Students marked
random (incorrect) answers because they didn’t take the process seriously.

If students took
the process seriously, more of their answers would have been correct.

Different answers
would provide better data.

Now, this explanation
applies if, and only if, the students both were
and believed themselves more capable
than their responses suggested, thus making their incorrect responses acts of
pure defiance.

Research ethics, however,
demand that we examine all the possible explanations of the data.Is it possible that the students’ answers only
seemed random because they didn’t know what the right answers were?Alternatively, is it possible they marked
random answers because they knew they lacked the necessary knowledge or skills
to do otherwise?In Why Don’t Students Like School?, cognitive psychologist Daniel T. Willingham
explains that people enjoy thinking but only “if we judge that the mental work
will pay off with the pleasurable feeling we get when we solve a problem.”Absent the belief that effort will yield
the dopamine rush of success, most people will give up.This is why I no longer even attempt sudoku
puzzles.

If the students didn’t
try because they either knew or suspected that their effort would not result in
a payoff, there is no reason to believe that greater effort would have resulted
in more correct answers.More
importantly, the administrative team ignored the very solid data their students
provided, that, at best, they lacked confidence or motivation and, at worst, were
incapable of correctly answering the questions.“What forest? I don’t see any forest! There’s too damn many trees in the way!”

To incentivize the
students, the principal mandated that their scores on the CFA be counted as 10%
of their semester grade.It is bad enough that those outside the profession dictate policy that is counterproductive to our students' needs. I find it inexcusable that an instructional leader would demonstrate such disregard or ignorance of the function of formative assessment. These are tools to collect data regarding a student’s progress toward a learning goal which is then used to adjust instruction. Formative assessments should never penalize students for not knowing information they have not yet been taught.Nor are they tools for social engineering.

Even if we allow,
for argument’s sake, that the original premise was correct, and the students
randomly marked their tests because they didn’t take them seriously.Is it reasonable to then assume that these
same students will feel differently if you threaten them?

Conclusion

I served my time in a public-school
classroom and am therefore not unfamiliar with the many ways teenagers try to
game the system.They can be real asshats.That impulse
to test the boundaries and see what they can get away with is kind of what
makes them teenagers.What separates us—the
adults—from them is our ability to resist the urge, however strong, to respond
to their impulsive, short-sighted behavior with impulsive, short-sighted
behaviors of our own.

Educators do not take an
oath of office, but maybe they should and, like doctors, pledge to, first, do
no harm.

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Ask the average person
what it takes to achieve excellence in any field, and you won’t have to wait very
long before hearing some variation on the expression, “You gotta give 100%!”

This attitude goes largely unquestioned. Until only a
few months ago, I wholeheartedly believed that, to be brilliant or successful, you
must be single minded and resolute. And
then a friend pointed out the simple arithmetical error in that line of
reasoning:

“Make a list of all the
things that are a priority in your life,” she said.

So I did.

·Work

·Friends

·Spirituality

·Entertainment

·Exercise

·Pets

·Personal Hygiene

·Sleep

·Eating

·Romantic life

·Home maintenance
(cleaning, yardwork, etc.)

“Good. Now, if you give 100% of your effort to being
brilliant at work, how much is left for everything else?”

Even if we accept the cliché
of “giving 110%,” and we hold that 10% in reserve, that leaves me spreading myself
awfully thin.

Paradigms don’t fall
easily, and so I argued, “But every person I’ve ever heard of who did something
amazing said they put their all into creating that success!”

“And if you do a little
digging, you’ll probably find out they were terrible spouses or cruel bosses or
absentee parents or just miserable people all the way around.”

I had never considered
this. It certainly went a long way
toward explaining why every other facet of my life seemed so empty.

I shared this wisdom with
a group of beginning teachers. One of
them in turn related a chilling anecdote about a colleague who had recently
passed away. At the wake, dozens of her
former students approached her children with comments about how significant a presence
she was in their lives.

After smiling through many
such interactions, one of her daughters finally said, “Well, I’m glad you got
to see that part of her. We never did.” In giving 100% to the job, she had nothing left
for her own children.

Most of the young teachers
I work with are immensely grateful to receive permission to have a life. Others are harder to sell on the idea. It’s not difficult to understand why.

Teachers are typically great
students, and great students have an annoying habit of believing that everything
they produce is either perfect or garbage.
And because there is nothing in between these two binaries, and obviously
garbage is unacceptable, they cannot stop tinkering with a lesson plan or a
seating arrangement or anything else until it is perfect.

And suddenly it’s 7:30
pm, and you’re still at school, and you haven’t gotten to the gym, and you’re
too tired to meet up with the friend who invited you to dinner, and there’s no
time to take the dogs for a walk so you just let them out in the back yard and
you fall asleep on the sofa, and tomorrow you’ll get up and do the same thing.

Some Uncomfortable Realities

You have to recognize and
accept that your work will never be
perfect. Your students are
unpredictable and there’s 25 (or 41 or 155) of them, all of whom have quirks and
preferences and intentions. Stop trying
to hit a target that will not stand still.

You should also know that
the work is never done. You can do this job twenty-four hours a day,
seven days a week and never finish because there’s always something else you
can tweak or add or omit or polish.

Only you can say when the work stops. Set a
timer when working after hours. When the
timer goes off, go home. If you’re worried about not fulfilling your
commitments, make a list of all the things you have to complete. Sort it into three categories: (1) must be
done today; (2) complete before the end of the week; (3) mid- or long-term
project. Address the items in that
order.

Trust that there is a huge range of acceptability that
lies between perfection and garbage. “Good enough” is actually good enough much of
the time. You’ll have lots of
opportunities to improve if you don’t make yourself crazy in the process.

Outlasting the Odds

Teaching is an unusual
profession for many reasons, not the least of which is that the
responsibilities of a rookie on his or her first day are identical to those of
a veteran of several decades. Let that
sink in for a second. It may go a long
way toward explaining the oft-cited statistic that fifty percent of all
teachers leave the profession within the first three years.

If you want to last, you have to learn to prioritize, and one of those priorities
has to be you. Schedule gym time, a date with your significant other, a nap, etc. Put these appointments in your calendar and
respect them as much as you would if you had made an appointment with someone
else. Don’t treat yourself worse than
you would allow another person to treat you.

I know some
readers will remain skeptical. Only the
students matter! Fair enough, but it’s
worth noting that you cannot give what you do not have. If you work yourself to the point that you
have no energy, no joy, no humor, no love, how will you give those things to your
students?

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

A few weeks ago, I binge-listened to the podcast “S-Town.” Fascinating stuff. Much like the early work of The Simpsons, it’s three stories packed
like Russian nesting dolls. Just when you
think you’ve reached the resolution of one, another emerges. I don’t want to reveal too much, so this
set-up will necessarily be a bit vague.

In the third act, the narrator suggests that the central
character tried to save his quasi-protégé but may have realized too late that he
lacked the skill to do so. In trying, he
sacrificed himself. I could not help
identifying with him and was transported back to my days in the classroom.

I tell people I got into teaching
because I have a pathological need to feel important.Following my first year in the profession, I
was three days into summer vacation and realized that no one needed me for the
next two months. This led to morbid fantasies where I died in my home and no
one discovered my body until the neighbors complained about the smell. I need
to be needed.

April needed me.

At this
time, it was unusual to have electronic contact with students. Facebook and Twitter were still a few years
off, and Canvass and Google classroom were mere glints in some software
engineer’s eye. I posted my students’
homework and other resources on a free online service for teachers and encouraged
students to e-mail with questions about writing assignments or homework. What I
didn’t realize was that my responses were not filtered through the site; they
came straight from my home e-mail account. Once in possession of my home e-mail
address, April began IMing me.

If I’m being completely honest, I
was flattered. I had no personal life to speak of, so I was grateful to have
someone to “talk” to in the evenings. It started out with the usual teenage
troubles: school is stressing me out, mom doesn’t understand me, mom and dad
fight all the time. I know what it’s like to have warring parents, so I was a
sympathetic ear. I tried very hard to assure her that, although it might seem
otherwise, her parents loved her more than they loved themselves and certainly,
by all accounts, more than they loved each other. Sometimes, she would keep me
online for upwards of an hour and a half. That began to weary me, but I
couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I didn’t want her to view me as yetanother
adult who had abrogated her responsibilities to care for and protect her.

Several years earlier, a nice young
man in one of my junior classes had turned up truant several days in a row. On
the fourth day, I called his mother who apologized for his absence that day. I
innocently asked, “Okay, so you know he’s been out every day this week?”

Silence.

“I take you didn’t know that.”

“I’ve been out of town."

“Oh.”

She asked rhetorically, “What has
he been doing all this time?” and I heard the tremor in her voice that signaled
the onset of tears. “I don’t know what to do with him. What do I do with him?”

“Look, if I knew . . . this is
reason #18 I don’t have kids of my own.” She sniffed at my weak attempt at
humor—the one I used every time I
talked to the parent of a teenager doing the inexplicable things teenagers do.
“Let me make some calls and see what I can do. I’ll call you back as soon as I
know something.”

“Thanks, Deb.” I became addicted to
hearing that phrase.

Eventually, the kid went into
counseling.His mom called to tell me,
“He just stayed in his room the whole time he was absent. He wanted to kill
himself. I don’t know how I can thank you for letting me know about all this.”

“Well, if I’m ever fired, can I
count on you to organize the candlelight vigil?”

This time, her laughter was real.

Unfortunately, instead of immediately
putting April in the hands of people who were trained to handle these
situations, as I did with Evan, I overreached and tried to do it myself. Too
late, I realized I completely out of my depth, and, even then, I persisted. I
wanted to be the one to save her.

Only when her demands on my time
became intrusive did I finally ask April if I could talk to one of the school’s
social workers about her. She agreed.

Things got better for a while, and
then one day she skipped math to come to my office, explaining that she
couldn’t face going to class, that she felt like she wanted to jump out of her
skin. I was no stranger to panic attacks
and suggested she was experiencing one and that she should see a doctor.

That night, April was admitted for
in-patient treatment at a mental health facility. Thus began a descent that
seemed to have no bottom. She developed anorexia and began self-mutilating. She
was medicated with anti-depressants, anti-anxieties, anti-psychotics, anti-bipolars.
She spent months in treatment facilities. Each time she was admitted, she
fought to get released, and each time she was released she longed to go back.

This went on for the rest of her
junior year, her senior year, her freshman year in college. Even after I moved
away to attend graduate school, I would periodically receive e-mails and
letters from her, each a catalogue of the most recent horrors. With time and distance, I began to recognize
my own culpability in her illness.Riddled with guilt, I apologized to her for not getting her in touch
with professionals earlier.

She credits me with saving her
life.I remain unconvinced.Hubris masquerading as altruism is perhaps the
most insidious form of narcissism.

Dr. James Comer of Yale University
is famous for his assertion that no great learning can take place in the
absence of a great relationship.Teacher
preparation programs admonish their candidates to teach the whole child.Even the bumper sticker and t-shirt
industries proclaim that we don’t teach [insert subject matter here], we teach
children.What this means in real life is
that effective teachers cannot remain ignorant of their students’ lives outside
the classroom.Knowing the context or
cause of a child’s behavior allows you to respond to it more effectively.

The problem is that, once you know,
you can never not know.And the people who become teachers tend to be
people who want to fix problems.I mean,
it’s not called a “helping profession” for nothing.

The tricky part is determining
where the boundary between commitment and overreach lies.I used to be the announcer for our school’s
wrestling matches and would attend the “coaches’ meeting” at the local pub afterward.Over a beer, one of my students’ fathers
tried to ingratiate himself with me by bemoaning what a lazy student his son
was.I couldn’t resist correcting him:
“He’s a good kid.He’s really smart.”
Pause.“You know, he thinks you hate
him.”

The father seemed shocked, as any
decent part would be.“No, he doesn’t.”

I shrugged, “That’s what he told
me.”

Did my action help?I have no idea.Was it appropriate?Probably not.I saw an opportunity to give this kid a voice and jumped at it.If the guy wouldn’t listen to his son, maybe
he’d listen to the teacher he was hitting on.

A legislator or central office
administrator reading this might attempt to “solve” the boundary problem by
creating a zero-tolerance policy for parent-teacher and student-teacher
interactions outside of school.Such a
policy is absolutely untenable.Even if
you forego the bar, you’ll run into your kids and their families at the grocery
store, at the burger joint, in the locker room at the gym.Some teachers are related to the parents of
their students or sing in the same church choir.Teachers cannot simultaneously remain aloof
and get actively involved.

So, again, where do you draw the
line?While others may reject my answer
as irresponsible or unenforceable, I think the rightness or wrongness of your
behavior lies in its motivation.If your
endgame is the acquisition of gratitude and love from your students or their
parents, you have crossed over to the dark side.

Unfortunately, as in my case, it may only be
in retrospect that you recognize your error.

Friday, March 31, 2017

My dogs know quite a few words: out, walk, cookie, ball, and grandma are
particular favorites. They acquired this
vocabulary through association. I held
up a biscuit and asked, “Who wants a cookie?” and, because everyone wants a
cookie, they quickly learned to associate that word with the snack they enjoyed
so much. It is important to note that the
concept of a cookie preceded their
acquisition of the word “cookie.”

In much the same way, very young children acquire vocabulary
by pointing at things and making some sort of questioning vocalization. Parents then give them a label for the
thing. “That’s a doggie! Can you say ‘doggie’?”

At age three, my nephew scored off the charts verbally in large part
because my sister and brother-in-law brought him to museums and aquariums and
gave him picture books, exposing him to myriad items for which he desired
names. He could
discern a backhoe from a bulldozer and a stegosaurus from . . . some other
dinosaur. Ask him. I’ve forgotten most of that stuff.

In school, we tend to approach vocabulary in reverse. We first offer students a new term—adjective,
velocity, transpiration—and afterwards show them examples. Without a mental model to anchor the
terminology, vocabulary has nothing to hold it in working memory. Students forget the words and what they mean.

Sometimes we give them several related terms at the same
time: conduction, convection, and radiation; comparison and contrast;
associative, distributive, and commutative.
Again, without some mental model that allows them to keep each term
separate, they conflate them. If you’d
like to see the truth of this, ask a random third grader to tell you the
difference between narrative, persuasive, and expository writing.

I have become convinced that a better way to introduce
content-specific vocabulary is to provide the examples first. Let students figure out what the distinguishing
characteristic is and only then give
them the academic language.

In a recent seminar, a young teacher mentioned that her
students struggled to correctly identify common written organizational strategies:
chronological, process/sequence, etc. I
pulled together several bundles of paragraphs, each on a variety of topics but
organized the same way. Without any
preliminary instruction, I gave groups of teachers a single bundle and asked
them to figure out their commonality.

When I checked in with the teacher whose classroom struggle
had prompted the activity, her group had correctly identified their paragraphs’
structure as problem-solution. She said,
“I like this so much! Instead of me
telling them what it is, it’s like I’m drawing it out of them!”

I grinned for two reasons.
First, I love it when teachers see value in an activity I have offered
them. Second, she had unwittingly excavated the
etymology of the word “education,” which comes from the Latin educere, meaning “to draw out.”

I often hear teachers lament, “Our kids don’t have any
background knowledge!” when they merely lack content-specific background knowledge.

Knowing this, we are probably best served by determining
what general knowledge can be brought
to bear on our content. Students may not
think they know anything about thermodynamics, but they can tell the difference
between a large container of water that won’t scald them and a small container
that will.

Instead of giving them the scientific terms heat and temperature and then letting them perform the lab, why not let them
perform the lab first? Let them explain
what happened in their own words: “That big pot of water changed the
temperature more than that little one with the boiling water, ‘cuz there was
more of it, you know, so it, like, had more, I don’t know, like, power.”

“Power, nice! In
science, we call that ‘power’ heat. Why does the big pot have more heat?”

“Because there’s more water in it!”

“Specifically, there are more water molecules in it. So, heat is the sum of all the molecules
together.”

The teacher I
mentioned earlier put together a series of activities to engage students in
recognizing text structure. In addition
to having them identify the common organization of several different
paragraphs, she created puzzles with each sentence of a paragraph on separate pieces. Students who placed the sentences in the
correct order could more quickly assemble their puzzles.

I checked in with her recently to see how her students were
handling the concept of text structure and organization. She shared, “I had one student in particular say that he finally gets relationships
between sentences.”

Over the course of my career, there
were many days when I worked so hard in class I felt I should be wearing tap
shoes and a sparkly outfit. When the
bell rang, I was bathed in sweat and physically exhausted.

Great
teachers are choreographers, not dancers.
You plan the moves that will bring the results you desire, but it should
be your students who execute them. It’s
a more sustainable tack for you, and it is likely to lead to more learning for
them.

The first block, which ran from 7:15. until almost 9:00 a.m.,
was highly engaged, the second block not so much. Given everything we’ve seen lately
about how teenagers need more sleep, these results seem counterintuitive. If any class should be disengaged, it’s the
one that is still asleep.

As a closure activity, their teacher asked for feedback on
their discussion, and several students mentioned how awkward the whole ritual
felt. When the teacher asked them to dig
deeper into the cause of this awkwardness, one young lady claimed, “We don’t
know each other!”

The teacher countered that they had been together for eight
weeks, the implication being that they should know each other by now, and the
student responded, “Just because we’re in class together doesn’t mean we talk
to each other!”

I was immediately transported back to May 1996, the spring
of my first year of teaching. We were
discussing Of Mice & Men, and one
student made an excellent point to which another student said, “I agree with
the boy by the window…”

I was horrified.

“The boy by the window?!
That’s Justin! You’ve been in
class together for eight months! How do
you not know his name?”

The problem is real and, while we didn't create it, it is in our best interests to solve it.

The Difference
Between Regular and Honors

I’ve heard more than a few teachers claim, “I could probably
do that with my honors kids, but my regular kids just can’t handle it.” The implicit assumption here is that honors
students, by virtue of their superior intellects or work ethics, are more fitted to academic
discourse than their less academically gifted peers.

I’d like to propose an alternative explanation. Honors students take honors classes, which
are fewer in number than the—call it academic, call it regular, call it what you will—middle track. As a result, honors students tend to be in
many more classes with the same people over the course of several years. They may not like all of their peers, but
they know what to expect from them.

By contrast, average students may have a completely new set
of peers every period of every day every year, giving them limited opportunity to build relationships. Consequently, they lack the trust in each
other that allows them to share ideas.

In addition, there are very real social barriers that teachers
ignore at their own peril. As they get older, student bodies separate according
to a series of unwritten and unforgiving laws that dictate where they can and
cannot eat lunch, who they can date, whose parties they can be invited to, what
extracurricular groups they can join, and how
enthusiastically they are allowed to contribute in class.

Unless a teacher has only students from a single social
caste in his classroom, he will have to spend some time breaking down the
barriers between students before they will collaborate successfully.

Building Classroom
Relationships

For several years, I taught a class for at-risk
seniors. One year, two young men--one
was a very Caucasian athlete, the other a very Latino gang member—nearly came
to blows a few times during class, convinced that they were mortal
enemies. I initiated a regimen of team building
and class building exercises that would enable them to learn a little low-risk
information about each other and discover some common ground. Eventually, they stumbled upon the fact that
they both liked girls and getting high. I’ll
grant you, I may have created problems for authority figures elsewhere in the
community, but, as far as my class concerned, those two were no longer the
source of any behavioral issues (and promised not to get high before or during
my class).

If you want students who don’t know each other to work
collaboratively, you must first help them break down those social
barricades. Assign them an activity that
requires them to find out something about each other. For example, while you take attendance, ask
each student in a small group to speak for 30 seconds on any of the following
topics:

What did you do last weekend/what are your plans
for this weekend?

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done?

If you had $1,000,000 but only one day to spend
it, what would you do?

If you could talk to one of your relatives who
is no longer here, who would it be and what would you talk about?

Realize that not all the material in these resources is necessarily
safe for school, so use some judgment.

Other Activities

A Google search using the generic term “class building
activities” yielded half a billion hits; there is no shortage of material out
there. I prefer tasks that enable the sharing
of personal information over those that merely ask students to complete a
physical challenge. Any activity that
requires a significant amount of physical contact or closeness should be viewed
with extreme skepticism, but use your own comfort level as a guide. If you wouldn’t want to participate in the
activity, don’t foist it onto your students.

Bottom Line

Do some type of team building or class building activity
three times a week—more if your students need it—and you will be amazed at the
change that occurs in their willingness to participate and to support each
other. Students may resist initially, so
I recommend that you participate in these activities and share information
about yourself. You are part of the
team, and they need to know they can trust you as much as they trust each
other.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

I realize that declaration is utterly lacking in
finesse. So was Brandy’s death. On Monday morning, she was alive, and by
Monday afternoon she wasn’t. No lead-up, no warning.

The default response of almost everyone close to her has
been But I just talked to her…

yesterday,

this morning,

last night.

Like the execution of Ned Stark, the first time this
happens, we are utterly unprepared, and the feelings that arise are equally
unpredictable.

When I was 17, a classmate died in a farming
accident. We learned about it on
Saturday night during a basketball game.
Friday he was at school. Saturday
afternoon he was dead. I had harbored a
bit of a crush on him and was shocked and saddened by his passing. For weeks, I would forget that he was gone
and turn toward his locker to tell him something during passing period. I’d quickly realize my mistake and look
around to make sure no one had seen me. I
have no better word to describe what I felt in those moments than jealousy. In dying, he had attained an understanding of
something that I could not comprehend, and I wanted to know what he knew. I just didn’t want to die to get it.

At 38, Brandy was among the oldest of my former
students. She was smart, acerbic, prone
to sarcasm, reliable, funny. She was one
of the many kids who found a place to belong in the school’s theater
department. As costume crew chief, she was
my right hand for at least a half dozen shows.
In fact, she showed me the ropes when I was first hired. She introduced me to my first Dairy Queen
Blizzard. She also introduced me to her
older sister, who is my best friend. If for
no other reason, I am eternally in her debt for this.

Although I never discussed this with her explicitly, I
don’t imagine that high school was particularly comfortable place for
Brandy. She did not possess the currency
that is valued in high school. She was
not bubbly or athletic or cute and cuddly.

And that’s what makes her death all the more heart
breaking. From my limited perspective,
it seems that it is only recently that she began to embrace all the
possibilities open to her. She had
started a new job that was both emotionally fulfilling and potentially
lucrative. She began distance running
and taking cool vacations. There was so
much she seemed poised to attempt.

I don’t know how the rumor got started that high school
is the best time of your life, but it’s time we put it to bed. There’s a reason they refer to graduation as
Commencement. When high school ends,
that’s when the good stuff begins:

The careers.

The loves.

The houses.

The pets.

The hobbies.

The friends.

The hair colors.

There’s an S on the end of each item on that list. Do you honestly expect to want forever what
you wanted when you were 18?

Some years ago, I attended a funeral for a 21-year old
who was killed in a motorcycle accident.
The priest was given the unenviable task of imbuing this tragedy with
some meaning that might comfort this young man’s family. The refrain he kept returning to was how wonderful it would be to remain 21 forever.

The sermon came from the same well-meaning place as the
fatuous remarks with which you are inundated whenever an inexplicable tragedy
strikes.

“She’s with God
now.”

“You know, you can still talk to her, right?”

“It’s all part of God’s plan for you.”

I reject all of these.

I have another former student, Linda, also in her
thirties, who has metastatic cancer. It
is in her brain. It is in her
spine. She has a three-year old son who has never
known his mother when she was not sick.

You cannot make me believe that God needs this woman more
than her son does.

I don’t think we are supposed to find comfort or meaning in
a young woman’s death. In fact, such
events should make us profoundly uncomfortable. The only useful purpose they serve is to shock
us out of our complacency, to remind us that life is fragile and temporary,
that today is a gift, and tomorrow is far from guaranteed.

Since being diagnosed, Linda has completed her PhD in
musicology, become a much sought-after author of concert program notes, begun a
popular and highly respected blog debunking myths about classical music, and
continues to be a wife and mother. Occasionally,
she’ll post on Facebook that the chemo slowed her down that day and,
consequently, she was only able to finish two
of the four writing projects she wanted to get to.

Let’s stop looking for meaning in death. Rather, let us allow the constant threat of
it inspire us to lead full and intentional lives.

Friday, January 20, 2017

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but somewhere along the
way people began seeking me out as a mentor.
They ask me for career advice. Me?
All the time!

I’m not being falsely modest when I say I don’t really know
why. My own career was built on a
foundation of poorly researched choices, chutzpah, and desperation. If not for a few instances of tremendous serendipity,
I’d be living in the basement of my sister’s house and hoping to score an ACT tutoring
gig at a store front in a strip mall.

Seriously. I got my
first teaching job totally by accident. The
names of most of Chicago’s suburbs are compounds of a limited number of natural
phenomena. There’s Forest Park, just west of the
city, and Park Forest to the south; Lake Forest on the north shore and LakePark
to the southwest. As a city dweller who didn’t drive, I had neither reason nor
interest in learning these nuances, so I confused the names of a prestigious
north suburban school district with a slightly less glamorous one to the west. Glenbrook’s loss was Glenbard’s gain. And mine.

But I digress.

I work with a lot of young teachers, and, I suppose because
my terminal degree is in educational administration and policy, they often ask
me for advice about becoming administrators.
First, I explain that I have little interest in either administration or
policy. My degree is a function of the department
that employed the person who was chairing my dissertation committee—another poorly
researched choice that eventually worked itself out—and that my interests lie
in teacher quality and efficacy.

This rarely discourages anyone from continuing to solicit my
opinion. So here’s what I tell
them.

Wait five years.

Most of you probably think that I’m alluding to the folk
wisdom that it takes five years to become a teacher, that, if expertise is in
large part a product of experience, five years is the minimum amount of
experience needed to quality as an expert.

That’s not why I tell them to wait.

A good administrator has to have lived through at least one
cycle of state and national elections. You have to experience firsthand overhauling
your curriculum in an effort to comply with one administration’s policy only to
be asked by another to dismantle and rebuild it four years later. You need to feel the heartbreak that occurs
when, after buying into a paradigm shift and working for two years to
transition your practice to meet it, you are betrayed by the same people who
pitched it to you in the first place.

Sometime in the late 1990s, the state of Illinois adopted a
new certification process. Teachers had
five years to assemble evidence of their continued professional learning. Hard copies of this evidence—transcripts,
certificates, programmes, etc.—would then be submitted to the Illinois State
Board of Education where, presumably, someone’s job would be to verify that
every certified teacher in Illinois had attained the necessary number of
credits.

There are approximately 130,00 teachers in Illinois. If each of them submitted only five
artifacts, the ISBE headquarters would collapse under the weight of nearly ¾ of
a million documents. Well, that’s what I
was counting on anyway.

For many of my younger colleagues (and, sadly, some of the
older ones), this process was a source of tremendous anxiety. I overheard more than a few panicked phone
calls attempting to track down a certificate of attendance for a conference they’d
attended six months earlier.

I collected nothing—just waited. I’d been around long enough to know this wasn’t
going to happen.

And it didn’t. When the first few portfolios starting
arriving in Springfield, those tasked with implementing the policy suddenly
realized that lacked the time, the manpower, and the will to do so.

I don’t know what replaced it. Presumably something equally superficial but
less bulky.

One of the most important jobs a principal must do is to
serve as a buffer between her faculty members and the continuous barrage of stupidity
bombarding them. A principal may not be
able to excuse teachers from external mandates, but he can help them discriminate
between tasks worth doing well and those worth doing well enough. Great principals
encourage their people to put their time and energies into executing policies
that are meaningful and stand a chance of sticking around.

The other stuff they let them half-ass.

But until you’ve been in the classroom at
least five years, it can be hard to tell the difference.